Numbers 14:20-35

Evangelical Heritage Version

God Decrees Forty Years of Wandering

²⁰ The Lord said, “I have pardoned them just as you have said. ²¹ But as surely as I live, and as surely as the entire earth is filled with the glory of the Lord, ²² not one of the men who has seen my glory and my signs, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, and who has tested me these ten times and has not listened to my voice— ²³ I promise that none of them will see the land which I swore to their fathers. None of those who treated me with contempt will see it. ²⁴ But because my servant Caleb had a different spirit and has followed me completely, I will bring him into the land to which he traveled. His descendants will possess it. ²⁵ Since the Amalekites and the Canaanites are living in the valleys and lowlands, tomorrow you are to turn back and set out into the wilderness along the route to the Red Sea.”

²⁶ The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, ²⁷ “How long will this wicked community grumble against me? I have heard the Israelites’ constant grumblings against me. ²⁸ Tell them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Lord, I will do to you just as I have heard you say. ²⁹ In this wilderness your corpses will fall. All of you who were registered in the census, every one of you twenty years old and up who have grumbled against me, ³⁰ I swear that none of you will go into the land where I promised to settle you, except for Caleb son of Jephunneh and Joshua son of Nun. ³¹ But your children, whom you said would become plunder, I will bring in, and they will experience the land which you have rejected. ³² But as for you, your corpses will fall in this wilderness. ³³ Your children will be shepherds in the wilderness for forty years. They will have to endure your prostitution until your corpses perish in the wilderness. ³⁴ You will bear the consequences of your guilt for forty years, based on the number of days that you scouted the land, forty days, one year for every day. You will experience my opposition.’ ³⁵ I, the Lord, have spoken. I swear that I will do this to this entire wicked community, who are gathered together against me. In this wilderness they will perish. There they will die.”